[Az-Geocaching] Officially speaking....

[mike and gale jett]

My 2 cents.
Archaeologists are a funny breed... I should know. We've all encountered 
aggressive pothunters who think it's their God-given right to waste a site 
for a few dollars. And they have often threatened us with physical harm for 
speaking against pothunting. So now archaeologists are obsessively 
secretive. Hence the run-around.If any of you want to know how to spot an 
archaeological site or if your cache is impacting a site, just ask me. I 
used to do it for a living. Just don't ask me to hike difficult terrain. I 
can't do that anymore.As for a training session, perhaps an event cache (not 
Wolfb8's virtuals) at Wupatki or Montezuma Well would help. I can show you 
what to look out for there.
Desert Viking


>From: Chelby Geiss <chelby@desertsol.com>
>Reply-To: listserv@azgeocaching.com
>To: listserv@azgeocaching.com
>Subject: Re: [Az-Geocaching] Officially speaking....
>Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 12:22:17 -0700
>
>Excellent overview, Larry! I just want to ad a little something with 
>regards to the Indian Reservations.
>I spoke with the Land Use Ordinance Enforcement Officer with the Gila River 
>Indian Community.  And she had excellent points that I completely agree 
>with.  The Gila River Indian community is a sovereign nation...PRIVATE 
>LAND!  And of course we must ask permission to place a cache on private 
>land.  But, the majority of the reservation land has archaeological sites 
>and/or are sacred sites!  These need to be respected!  She stated that the 
>mountain ranges within their community are currently off limits.  She had a 
>excellent point that all the mountains around Phoenix were and still are 
>sacred to them. She understands that people enjoy visiting these, but she 
>asks that we please respect their wishes in regards to the reservation land 
>because that is all they have left!  And not trying to get into a "stealing 
>the land from the Native Americans" fight...but she is right!
>And if you need any more reason to stay off reservation land: if you are 
>caught on the Gila River Reservation without the proper permit, you risk 
>having anything of value confiscated...that includes your vehicle and your 
>GPS! And then you will be prosecuted through their judicial system!
>I am going to keep in contact with her.  Like Larry said they are not 
>against geocaching. She was very interested in it...but we need to respect 
>their wishes!  We have parks, cities, and forests to cache in.  Their 
>reservation is  372,000 acres...very small. In fact if you look at a map, 
>the total area of all the reservations combined is not that large!
>
>I also talked with the National Parks State Coordinator for Arizona.  He is 
>working to get a list of contacts for the various National Parks that we 
>can put up on azgeocaching for everyone to use.  He was quick to point out 
>that they have not had any problem with caches in Arizona(which he was very 
>proud of), but that there has been problems elsewhere.  He said his people 
>would be more than willing to work with someone who wanted to place a cache 
>to assure that it was not threatening anything archaeological or 
>environmental.  So I guess the point to make here yet again...JUST ASK!:)
>
>There was talk of actually offering some training on how to spot 
>archaeological sites because several people honestly didn't know their 
>cache was on a site!  I think this is an AWESOME idea!  Arizona has 
>something on the rest of the country in that we have a far greater number 
>of archaeological sites.  Add to that the fact that many of us are not 
>native Arizonans...we just don't know what to look for!  But then we got 
>(what seemed to me) the run around from some of the Land Stewards:
>-Shame on you for putting a cache on a site.
>*But we didn't know it was a site. Can you please show us what to look for.
>-No that's confidential.
>Maybe I took that all wrong...but I kept running in that circle all last 
>night after the meeting!
>
>Well, I'm going to stop talking now...I know Steve is probably writing a 
>huge summary of everything as we speak!:)
>
>It was a very good meeting!
>C:)
>Team desertSol
>Chelby & Kevin
>+
>Kiva and Lancer (German Shepherds)
>Apache Junction, AZ
>www.desertsol.com/~chelby/geocaching
>
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